181–190 of 261 posts
Manhattan's: 71,998.9/sq mi
It's difficult to look at this without thinking that the initial problem to be solved is density in the urban core.
Eventually, yes, you need much better transit to outlying areas. This will take decades even with iron clad political will, which isn't happening short of a takeover by house of Bourbon.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m sure there’s all kinds of cool stuff in Fresno if you know where to look. It’s not the same as the Bay Area though.
That is generically true of any two places. But, you stated there was lots less to do there. I am curious what you are into that this seems to be true to you. What are your interests? I was a military wife. I have lived all over. I just find your statements genuinely baffling and I would like to understand where you are coming from.
There’s nothing wrong with Fresno. Plenty of lovely people live there, and I’m sure there are all sorts of things happening all the time. It just doesn’t (to me at least) seem comparable to the Bay Area. As one example, Fresno State is a fine school, but it can’t compete with Berkeley and Stanford.
The population density is also relatively low, and it doesn’t seem like a very easy place to live without frequently using a car. (I end up using a car about once a month.) I really appreciate being able to walk to 3 different grocery stores within a 3 block radius, walk to 10 coffee/tea shops, walk to 100 restaurants of every imaginable type, walk to the park, walk to 2 library branches, walk to several little art galleries, walk to bakeries and fish markets, walk to all sorts of little shops, walk to the subway, ...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If we added bus lanes they way they do in other countries, it would address the traffic problem. But we always favor the lone-commuter-in-car.
It doesn't help with scaling (you can have multi-car trains but it's much harder to have multi-car busses) or max speed, but it would certainly be an improvement over the current situation!
None of our mass transit operates near the speed limit anyway, afaik.
After 8 years in SF I have been seriously considering moving to NYC, largely over my commute to South Bay, but also for the substantial increase in density which brings with it a manifold increase in cultural opportunities and activities. The weather is a drawback (in probably 200+ days in NYC over 10 years I can remember a single week of what I would consider nice weather). I have realized that crappy climate is a p…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is generically true of any two places. But, you stated there was lots less to do there. I am curious what you are into that this seems to be true to you. What are your interests? I was a military wife. I have lived all over. I just find your statements genuinely baffling and I would like to understand where you are coming from.
Meetups, museums, lectures by visiting scholars, stops on book tours, concerts/plays/other performances, cultural festivals, interesting architectural sites, professional sports, restaurants, a wide variety of interesting neighborhoods within walk distance, .... There’s nothing wrong with Fresno. Plenty of lovely people live there, and I’m sure there are all sorts of things happening all the time. It just doesn’t (to…
No, it isn't comparable. That is kind of the point here: If you are sick of the downside in the Bay Area of insane commutes, insane house prices, large numbers of increasingly aggressive homeless junkies, etc, then leaving might make more sense for some people than staying and hoping to fix some of these problems.
But thank you for giving me a meaty reply.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Aren't there attractive places in California where tech companies could set up offices to accommodate those who want to leave the valley, while still making sure everyone is still just a few hours drive away if they should be required in a meeting at main HQ?
Attractive enough to pull the top talent? No The underlying problem here is the same problem you have with remote work - it's vastly harder to get complex tasks done when people are remote. For all sorts of reasons (including project expediency), you ideally want the front-line programmers in the same office as the technical leaders.
I mean I moved out of a city to a distance of about an hour. I have the benefit of being able to work from home so I don't have to go to the office, but I'd very much appreciate if the company set up a satellite office closer to where I'm at. The alternative to having to work full time in the city isn't really an option. Either I work from home, or somewhere close. And these tech cos right now have to be losing people to rural companies, if they don't allow them to work from home and don't set up alternatives to SV offices.
> Do we want to be a white-washed Disneyland for software developers, or do we want to be a vibrant, diverse, integrated (and bigger) city? What if people actually prefer the former? I mean, sure, their "stated preference" can be later but the "revealed preference" can actually be a myopic selfish one; which is not that abnormal and totally in line with basic human nature (claims of "being progressive" notwithstandin…
People spend $100 a day to experience this.
San Francisco's population density: 18,573/sq mi Manhattan's: 71,998.9/sq mi It's difficult to look at this without thinking that the initial problem to be solved is density in the urban core. Eventually, yes, you need much better transit to outlying areas. This will take decades even with iron clad political will, which isn't happening short of a takeover by house of Bourbon.
Build effective transit, and dense housing automatically happens, because people will organically demand it -- the story plays out identically in nearly every city that builds a light rail line. The YIMBY activists in SF don't seem to understand this, despite lots of rhetoric about supply and demand.
The truth is, YIMBY folks in SF are myopically focused on a few core neighborhoods that are already pretty dense (i.e. the Mission), and completely ignoring the driving forces behind the demand. This is largely because they're being supported by people who want to re-develop already expensive neighborhoods, which is a quick way to make a buck in the short term, and a dubious way of responding to a housing crunch. An effective movement to increase housing density in SF should focus on better transit corridors, and leave the housing policy to happen of its own accord.
In other words: if you want density in SF, run a subway line down Geary.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's beneficial for the rest of the US to find solutions that make high density cities successful. Such locations tend to be both your cultural and economic centers, in particular due to the network effects of putting so many people in close proximity to each other. (The Internet helps but hasn't proven to be a substitute quite yet.) Additionally, dense urban areas tend to have the smallest environmental impact per c…
These solutions have already been found and implemented in developed countries around the world. The problems in the US are ideological limits that circumscribe the forms of collectivist action that are required to implement strategies that work. Singapore, Western Europe, Japan etc don’t have these limits and thus don’t have the problems that result from them. Heck in Singapore, upwards of 80% of people live in some…